How to Drive Last Minute Online Sales Before the Holidays

The holiday shopping season seems to come to a close almost as quickly as it begins. Yet it’s a time of year retailers rely on. If you want to increase last minute holiday sales online, fortunately there’s plenty you can still do before the holiday shopping season passes you by. Don’t leave your sales figures to chance. Use your online presence to increase holiday sales today.

Here are some simple ideas you can implement on your own website to attract more last minute holiday shoppers this year.

10 Tips to Drive Last Minute Online Sales for the Holidays

1. Push gift card sales — instant or scheduled email delivery for even the latest shoppers.
2. Offer last minute offers to social media followers. They may even spread the offers virally through sharing.
3. Emphasize shipping deadlines to make people buy now when they realize if they order it later it’ll be too late. That includes express shipping options — even a day or two before the holidays might not be too late if they’re willing to spend a bit more.
4. Offer free shipping for orders of a certain value, even if you don’t usually do that. You’ll convince people to buy more.

5. 

   Offer free gift wrapping, gift receipts, or other gift-specific perks that make things easier on both buyers and gift recipients. Also offer to ship directly to recipients.

6. Highlight seasonal items.
7. Associate certain products with common groups of people in your customers’ lives — “this would be a great gift for mom,” etc.
8. Offer gift idea searches by category / recipient group to help customers who don’t have specific gift ideas in mind yet. Tell them what to buy and then sell it to them.
9. Offer free gifts. If you sell books, free bookmarks would be an example. It can be something small. Or if you sell digital products you could do a sale where if they buy one download as a gift, they get the same download for themselves as a bonus.
10. Catch late buyers with after Christmas sales or year-end sales — for those celebrating later, looking to use their own generic gift cards (like American Express or Visa gift cards), or simply looking to save. Remember that holiday shopping goes beyond the actual holidays. Even if they use a store gift card, you can up-sell them with great deals to earn even more.

Don’t give up on reaching and exceeding your year-end sales goals just yet. Find ways to use the Web to drive last minute holiday sales. You might be looking for last minute sales, but plenty of buyers are out there looking for last minute deals too. Be the one to satisfy those needs and you can make the holiday season more profitable than you thought possible.